YOU scream, I scream, we all scream for ice cream - or so goes the old adage about how well-loved this cold creamy confectionary is.
But is it so loved that a navy once turned an entire ship over to making ice cream?
This claim has been published occasionally since World War 2, but is it true?
VERDICT:
TRUE
The US Navy once had two ships capable of producing approximately 1,500 gallons—just over 5,600 litres—of ice cream a day.
According to the US Naval Institute, these two ships were once refrigerated concrete barges used by the Army. The institute added that the love of ice cream emerged after the Navy banned alcohol in 1914.
"Researchers found that sailors were extremely fond of ice cream. The Navy turned two Army refrigerated concrete barges into maritime ice cream factories to keep up with demand.
The barges supplemented 'small-boys' that could not supply their own ice cream; the barges' output was about 1,500 gallons a day," wrote Taylor Sparks in an article on the Institute's website.
In another article about the unique ships of the US Navy, it is said that the ships' production capacity was advertised as producing ten gallons or roughly 37 litres of ice cream every seven minutes, which was then distributed all over the Pacific.
And when it comes to how much ice cream was loved by American sailors, Sparks had this anecdote;
"When the USS Lexington (CV-2) sank in the May 1942 Battle of the Coral Sea, sailors grabbed ice cream as they jumped overboard."
References:
https://www.usni.org/
https://news.usni.org/2015/01/
